Our staff and volunteers
Our leadership team runs the charity on a voluntary, unpaid basis. We also oversee the work of our volunteers.
We are looking for new volunteers to join the team and help us bring our ideas to life. If you can spare a couple of hours a week to help us achieve our ambitions, please contact us.
Alex Ellis-White - Founder and Chief Executive
Alex is our founder and leads the team of volunteers that develop and run the Givto service. His day job is in the NHS, where he has spent ten years leading strategic communications and engagement work for digital transformation and data programmes. He is also a volunteer director with the commercial arm of Voluntary Action Leeds which supports third sector organisations across the city. He lives near Leeds with his husband and two sons and in his spare time enjoys cooking, writing music and singing badly!
Emily Kucharski - Marketing and Communications Director
Emily has been building brands for 13 years within top creative agencies as well as start-up environments. She has led cross-discipline, and cross-border agency teams for global brands, and helped to launch new ones too. Emily brings diverse marketing experience, having started her career in digital, CRM and direct marketing, before moving to traditional agencies where she delivered long-term brand strategies, creative platforms, and integrated campaigns. She also helped to launch a social networking app for women back in 2019, and is now launching her own parenting insights app, after being struck as a new mum by how little data there is on everyday topics. When she’s not chasing after her toddler, Emily enjoys creative writing, yoga, and her lockdown hobby, knitting.
Nick Gregory - Technical Director
Nick originally qualified as an electronic engineer before embarking on a career in internet technology businesses. Over the past 22 years he has helped to grow multiple startups through to acquisition, and built technology platforms across the finance, security and telecommunications sectors. Nick currently works in an IT consultancy helping FinTech companies bring their products to market. A keen technologist and self-confessed tinkerer, Nick is at his happiest solving product problems of all shapes and sizes – from selecting the perfect font to improving the performance of high-traffic payment systems.
Penny Coulthard - Charity Engagement Director
As the chair of a local charity, Penny knows how hard it is to raise funds and increase the profile of small charities. She loves working with teams to create a new product and roll it out to as many people as possible, so the Better Giving Partnership and Givto are the perfect opportunity. She heads up our charity engagement and general operations. She loves to escape to the fells to run or travel to remote places in her campervan Hamish.